GEICO, the second-largest vehicle insurance underwriter in the US, has decided it will no longer cover Tesla Cybertrucks. The company is terminating current Cybertruck policies and says the truck “doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines.”

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Pretty sure they were one of the last major companies that would…

    Even if warranty pays for repairs to it, if it damages anything else the insurance still has to pay.

    The article mentions multiple examples of them just randomly shutting down during operation. That’s already bad. But this is going to be it’s first winter, it’s not surprising insurers don’t want to deal with it. They deal with large numbers, it’s not a question of “if” like an individual owner, its “when” for the insurer

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Class action lawsuits are gonna be a mother fucker

        Part of the purchase agreement of a Tesla agreeing to binding arbitration. This means no class action suit. You can opt out of this within the first 30 days, but you have to send a letter requesting it.

        How many Tesla owners do you think do that?

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          That assumes the court finds that enforceable. Usually they do, but a few times recently, they’ve said it’s not.

          • gramie@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            That’s one of the nice things about the law in Quebec. Binding arbitration clauses are illegal.

          • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            I mean in trumps court of law musk can’t lose.

            If dumpy wins, for sure no class action.

            If dumpy loses, his Supreme Court will still side with the conservative side anyway, so probably still no class action.

        • bluGill@fedia.io
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          1 month ago

          i don’t own a tesla, so if their cars injure me I can sue them*

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
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          Steam recently removed their arbitration clause, largely because paying for a thousand arbitration cases is worse than dealing with a class action.

          • locuester@lemmy.zip
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            1 month ago

            I’ve heard that death by 1,000 arbitrations is a good way to make em regret it. Glad to see it’s true.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Wow, I never thought I’d find an actual good argument for keeping independent car dealers as middlemen instead of allowing first-party sales, but here we are.

          • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            Can you connect the dots for me? Third party dealers always have idemnity? clauses anyways.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Presumably anything you’d agree to while buying from an independent dealer would be between you and the dealer, not you and the manufacturer, right? I don’t understand how the manufacturer would be a party to the transaction.

              (It might be that I’m naive about how modern car sales work.)

              • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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                1 month ago

                I’m pretty clueless too, but to me your assertion doesn’t hold up to the concept of recalls.

                The true answer is probably that we’re both wrong and the answer is that as a consumer: you lose, fuck you. Also fuck your family dog.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      The article mentions multiple examples of them just randomly shutting down

      Which is really strange considering they don’t pay anything for that…?

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        The go pedal and the steering wheel are equivalent to a keyboard/mouse and are not physically connected to anything. If the car shuts off, the wheels go where they feel like with absolutely no driver control.

  • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Why are insurance companies the ones making the rational decision about saying it’s a dangerous piece of shit and not our transportation regulators? It needs to be banned.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I don’t think insurance companies care of the trucks are dangerous per se. They care if they are expensive to repair, or prone to accidents which could attach liability to the policy holder and thereby the insurance company.

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I keep telling conservatives this. It makes sense to have some form of suspicion around a message when some corporation has a profit motive behind it. For instance, climate change and companies selling solar panels (although I wish they wouldn’t put SO much effort into that faint connection).

        However, that also applies for the inverse - that when insurance drops coverage for Florida homes, it’s because climate change is real and they know it will hurt their bottom line.

    • n2burns@lemmy.ca
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      Because insurance companies are filled with bean-counters (not intended as an insult, I’m a bean-counter in a different field) who want to come out ahead. That’s why the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) exists. You’d think organization that does crash tests and promotes new technology would be a government organization, but nope, it’s insurance providers that want to minimize payouts.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      I don’t see anything in the article suggesting it’s particularly dangerous, only that it’s very expensive to fix, and in a collision will probably cause significant damage to the other vehicle (though that doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily cause injury).

      The US doesn’t exactly approve or deny vehicles in general; any vehicle that conforms to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards can be sold, as far as I know. And I don’t see any section that covers safety of the other party in a collision, unfortunately. Maybe write your reps and suggest they add one.

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    God, I hope other places follow. I work in insurance and not only is everything about the cybertruck an absolute fucking nightmare to source, let alone find a shop for, every single goddamn owner is like the most insufferable chod. That goes for women too. Tesla drivers could already be a problem, but the truck owners are like regular Tesla owners gone feral.

  • Pogogunner@sopuli.xyz
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    1 month ago

    More importantly, Anderson has eight vehicles. GEICO is only choosing to terminate the insurance coverage from Cybertruck and is actively pursuing renewal of his vehicle coverage for the rest. This leaves no doubt that GEICO’s issue is directly related to the Tesla Cybertruck and not to Anderson or other factors.

    Why would someone own 8 vehicles?

    Robert added, “It makes no sense, as there are other, riskier cars out there. Let me know if you recommend any insurer for the truck. I have eight cars with an amazing record. I will be canceling my entire Geico policy!! Bye-bye!”

    I can’t think of a vehicle that is more likely to be a risk to others than the Cybertruck. I’m sure insurance adjusters see how people use Tesla FSD in spite of its shortcomings. The truck is heavy as hell and breaks in all sorts of ways others vehicles don’t.

    • Billiam@lemmy.world
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      Also, there have been no independent crash tests done so no insurance company can accurately assess the risk, so this is wholly unsurprising.

      Tesla have allegedly done their own crash tests, but they still have not released the data. It’s kinda what you’d expect when a government-regulation-hating techbro designs a “I got mine fuck you” vehicle.

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        If Geico, and presumably soon others, are angering the chuds by refusing to insure this, independent crash tests definitely occurred and they were not favorable.

        You don’t have to be an obnoxious YouTuber to crash a car.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          If Geico, and presumably soon others, are angering the chuds by refusing to insure this, independent crash tests definitely occurred and they were not favorable.

          When I said no independent crash tests had been performed, I was specifically referring to the IIHS since they’re the only ones who opinion really matters and they’ve stated they have not tested any Cybertruck. But yes, regardless of whether Tesla’s internal crash tests were performed by their staff or some other testing lab, the fact that they’re sitting on the results clearly indicates that they know just how poorly the crumplezone-less sharp-edged quality-uncontrolled ketaminemobiles fare.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          To be clear, I don’t know if that’s why GEICO is cancelling policies on Cybertrucks, but I’d bet heavily it’s a contributing factor. It could be that they decided the risk was worth it, until the trucks actually started coming out and the sheer number of recalls due to shitty manufacturing was just too much.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Why would someone own 8 vehicles?

      Why does anyone have anything? If they can afford to collect the things they are interested in, they will have many of those kinds of things.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        What if they’re interested in naked pictures of children?

        I use an extreme example to point out that “the market will provide” is a terrible argument for the existence of anything.

        • theherk@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          The gulf of difference kind of undercuts your point in this case. One is undoubtedly immoral and illegal. And it doesn’t change that part of the answer why somebody would have either is because they want that, which says nothing about it being a good thing.

          • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            Mining several normal human lifetimes of metals and resources (and the CO2 released into the atmosphere in order to gather those materials) just for something to sit around unproductively is obviously immoral so I don’t understand the relevancy here.

    • Zak@lemmy.world
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      Why would someone own 8 vehicles?

      Car collectors exist, and I have the impression quite a few of them are among the Cybertruck’s early adopters.

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        Honestly, a car collector is probably the best kind of person to have one I’d bet, given that they now exist out there. They don’t seem terribly safe for pedestrians and others to have around, so it they’re going to be out there in individuals hands, them being kept parked in some guys garage as some weird curiosity vehicle of the 2020s is probably better than being driven around on the daily as a pointy oversized commute vehicle

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      I can’t think of a vehicle that is more likely to be a risk to others than the Cybertruck.

      A Hummer for sure.

      Also most pickup trucks when you consider frontal visibility. I mean there are just an endless number of ways to measure and weigh safety.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      Why would someone own 8 vehicles?

      Because he’s a car enthusiast with a problem.

      (Source: I own six.)

      • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Kinda funny how it sneaks up on you when you get the space. I have 7 vehicles split between my wife and I. Most of them were bought at bottom of the market. People act like I must be wealthy as they drive a new suv worth $20 more than my fleet. I could replace the whole spread for like $30k. I’ll add the qualifier that 2 are motorcycles and I’m totally, definitely, working on selling my prior daily. But $3k isn’t exactly life-changing. I imagine this is a fuckcars zone but it’s a hobby for people. Every hobby is destructive. It’s not like car enthusiasts are driving multiple cars at a time, so the fuel consumption over time is normal. And the thirstier cars tend to be broken more often!

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          I imagine this is a fuckcars zone but it’s a hobby for people.

          More than you know: even I use a bicycle as my daily-“driver,” LOL!

          Of the six cars I have, only one isn’t an old, unreliable project car and/or two-seater. Even then, I only have that because my parents essentially forced it upon me. (They have some kind of silly hang-up about having a cargo bike be my sole means of transporting the kids, other than public transit.)

          Perhaps ironically, good urbanism is what gives me the freedom to treat cars as a hobby instead of a necessity, and I firmly believe that’s the way it ought to be. It’s a lot like how people can be into horses while also still understanding that it’s a dumb idea to commute to work on horseback.

  • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    those things are very poorly made and all the most important parts are made of cheap plastic that an average person can literally rip off with his or her bare hands

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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    “transparent metal” that breaks if it gets too hot, gets wiped with a microfiber cloth, or tapped by a wedding ring… 😂

    I want to feel bad for cyber truck owners, but at the same time these problems are not new and not unknown. So if you know that something is known to have problems, and you still buy it, don’t be so shocked that it has problems for you too.

    It was only a matter of time before insurance companies did something. I mean is it really that surprising that a company known for not wanting to pay out money if they can avoid it would want to not insure a rolling money pit?

  • Zier@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    Makes sense. It’s not a truck, car or SUV, it’s a cosplay vehicle. Lego vehicles from the toy store will outlast this shitshow.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      Lego vehicles from the toy store will outlast this shitshow.

      To be fair, those would outlast Toyotas, too.

  • NinjaTeensy@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    As much as I want it to be true, I couldn’t find the original tweet that the reddit post mentions. It’s not on that users profile when looking on Nitter.